In recent years, with progress of saving of energy in refrigerators, methods for improving cooling efficiencies, and methods for improving defrosting efficiencies in melting frost that adheres onto coolers have been developed for reducing amounts of power consumption in refrigerators.
As an example of conventional refrigerators that reduce amounts of power consumption in refrigerators, a refrigerator disclosed in JP-A-2010-60188 can be mentioned. In the disclosed refrigerator, the air that has been heated by a defrosting heater is prevented from flowing into a chamber to suppress elevation of the temperature of the chamber, thereby securing energy-saving effects. Furthermore, for example, a refrigerator disclosed in JP-2012-57910 can also be mentioned. In the disclosed refrigerator, radiation heat released from a defrosting heater is transmitted to a cooler, based on a heat-transfer plate, to enhance heating efficiencies.
Hereinafter, the above-mentioned conventional refrigerators will be described with reference to drawings.
FIG. 6 is a cross-section view of an area around a cooler in the refrigerator disclosed in JP-A-2010-60188. The cooler 601 is placed inside a cooling chamber 603. The cooling chamber 603 is a region that is formed at the rear of a freezing chamber 602 by a cooler cover 604.
At the front lower side of the cooler 601, a cold-air inlet 605 that is configured by the cooler cover 604 opens, and thus, the cold air is circulated. A warm-air-inflow space 606 is provided between the chamber-facing side of the cooler cover 604 and the side thereof facing the cooler 601. A bottom of the warm-air-inflow space 606 opens, and the air that has been heated by the defrosting heater 607 flows into the warm-air-inflow space 606.
According to the disclosed structure, a larger amount of the air that has been heated by the defrosting heater 607 during the defrosting process flows into the warm-air-inflow space 606, compared with the air flowing into the chamber. Therefore, it becomes possible to suppress elevation in the temperature inside the chamber and achieve high energy-saving capability since an amount of thermal energy that has been required to heat the chamber during the defrosting process can be reduced.
FIG. 7 is a detailed side sectional view of an area around a cooler in the refrigerator disclosed in JP-2012-57910. The refrigerator is provided with a heat-transfer plate 703 that is formed by a metal material having higher heat conductivity. The heat-transfer plate 703 has a heat-absorbing part 703A that directly receives radiation heat from a defrosting heater 702, and a heat-releasing part 703B that is placed in close contact with a cooler 701 to cover the rear of the cooler 701.
Since a radiation-heat-absorbing means 704 for absorbing radiation heat from the defrosting heater 702 is provided on a surface of the heat-absorbing part 703A in which the surface opposes the defrosting heater 702, the radiation heat from the defrosting heater 702 will be efficiently transmitted even to an area of the cooler 701 that is remote from the defrosting heater 702. Accordingly, it becomes possible to efficiently melt frost on the cooler 701, and thus, energy-saving properties of the defrosting apparatus (refrigerator) can be improved based on reductions in the time required for the defrosting process, and reductions in the capacity of the defrosting heater 702.